


Marry Me, Because I Want to Date You

by elizadunc (Ladybugbear2)



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Best Friends, F/M, Hyle and Jaime do, Hyle is a plot device, JB end game, Jaime is persistent but not in a bad way, Love Triangle, One Shot, brienne doesn't know it's a love triangle, persistence is key, very very minor Brienne x Hyle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 22:57:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21005546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybugbear2/pseuds/elizadunc
Summary: Jaime's been proposing to Brienne since college. Brienne has been taking it as a joke since college.





	Marry Me, Because I Want to Date You

**Author's Note:**

> Title from one of the last lines of the Proposal. 
> 
> Thank you thank you to my lovely beta Minerva, who stayed up until 6 am her time last night helping me edit this. 
> 
> Also thank you to Minerva, Awakeandwondering, and Aliveanddrunkonsunlight for pushing me to write this ridiculous one-shot

There’s a moan and then an expected “Oh my gods, marry me, Bluebell.” 

They’re cookies, and she got them from the store. 

But still, he proposes.

As he’s been doing for the last 8 years. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It had started in college, they had been assigned as partners in a required chemistry class and had quickly gone from hating each other, to becoming begrudging allies in the face of Dr. Tarly’s archaic ideas of teaching, to being best friends, over the course of about 3 months. 

The proposals were harmless at first, it had started as a joke, or at least, she had assumed it was a joke.

They had been up late studying and she had gone on a coffee run. She’d learned his coffee order by this point and, though she preferred tea, it wasn’t like remembering a coffee order was difficult. 

But he’d taken a sip and looked at her as if she was the Maiden in the flesh.

And then he’d done it. He’d said it. 

“Marry me, Bluebell.” 

She’d snorted and rolled her eyes, doing her best to hide her response to his dumb nickname that always made her feel like the ice cream more than the flower that he claimed was the inspiration. 

She’d allow herself to take out the whole interaction and turn it over in her mind later when she wasn’t being faced with the full force of her best friend.

He’d smirked at her predictable reaction and they’d both gone back to studying as if nothing at all had happened. Well, Brienne supposed, nothing actually had happened. 

It was only later that night in her dorm room that she’d sat on her bed and screamed a bit into her pillow about the fact that she’d actually heard the words “Marry me” directed at her. 

Not seriously of course. 

Brienne was well aware of what she looked like and what Jaime looked like. She was under no ridiculous notions that anything would ever happen between her and her best friend. So she had taken it as a joke and moved on. 

But then he’d done it again a few weeks later at the student union when she bought him a sandwich after he’d realized he left his wallet in his dorm room. 

And again when they were at the climbing wall in the student rec center and he’d forgotten his climbing shoes so she’d loaned him an extra pair that she had in her locker. They were purple. He looked hilarious. But still he said in that ridiculously serious voice, “Marry me, Bluebell”. 

Jaime had continued to “conveniently” forget his wallet, and so Brienne had continued to buy him coffee, or lunch, or any number of things that meant he would ask his dumb question. 

It continued like that for years. 

They'd graduated and moved to King’s Landing and started careers that kept them busy, day in and day out, and still he would propose. 

It had to have been the longest running joke in the history of forever. But Jaime liked it, and who was Brienne to deny him.

He’d shown up to her apartment once with a six pack and a movie and then asked her after she’d ordered the pizza, as if it were some big thing for her to pay 15 dragons for a large pizza with pepperoni and bell peppers. 

And again after she’d bought him yet another coffee and gotten his new, ridiculously complicated, order right the first time. An order that was much, much, more ridiculous than the simple black coffee with two creams and four sugars that had been his go to during college. That time he’d written the question on the napkin. He'd doodled a little flower next to his dumb nickname for her. A doodle that to her managed to look like a cross between a sad dog and a really weird looking dandelion. It had spikes.

She’d drawn mean looking eyes on it in response. Jaime had burst out laughing, and, after a moment, Brienne couldn’t help but join in. They’d laughed for what seemed like hours. They’d gotten stares. 

They had started to get settled into their jobs and their lives, they’d added some friends to the group and Brienne contented herself with a life full of friendship. Contented herself to a life without romance. 

Then she’d met Hyle Hunt. 

He was everything she’d expected to deserve in life. Almost nondescript looking, brown hair and brown eyes, and entirely forgettable. 

But he’d liked her. He’d brought her flowers and took her out to dinner and didn’t mention her height all that much. 

He had managed to be both sweet and a bit patronizing and while she wouldn’t have taken it from anyone else, she felt that if someone was actually showing an interest in her she should at least try to show an interest back. 

And it was fine. 

Jaime had hated him, but Jaime was a prickly person to people who weren’t in his immediate friend group. 

But they'd been fine. Hyle was fine.

He’d tried, toward the beginning, to call her Bluebell and she found that there was no way in any of the hells that she would ever allow anyone but Jaime to call her that dumb nickname. 

Hyle had been offended at first, but then had taken to calling her all sorts of different names that hinged on the word blue. 

She really hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings, and she’d already felt like she was pushing it with not allowing him to call her Bluebell. So she allowed it. 

Hyle was always doing that, finding ways to inch into her life in all of the spaces where Jaime normally fit. And it wasn’t always a seamless transition. 

She and Jaime loved watching documentaries about the age of heroes. Hyle found them mind-numbingly boring and never failed to let her know during the few times she picked one for their now weekly movie nights. 

Jaime loved trying new and weird dishes from different parts of the world and would regularly order from the most obscure hole in the wall restaurant he could find. Hyle hated anything that wasn’t from Westeros and refused to eat something that had more than one pepper of spice in it. 

Jaime and Brienne worked out on a regular basis and were matched fairly evenly, Hyle had gone once or twice to the gym and ended up complaining both times that they didn’t include him in their workout. Mostly because if they’d tried he would have collapsed into a heap on the ground.

He’d claimed that he was trying to be a good boyfriend. That generally boy/girl best friends weren’t as close as Jaime and Brienne were and Jaime was obviously trying to steal Brienne away. 

Brienne usually rolled her eyes at that and did her best to reassure Hyle that if Jaime was interested in her he would have said something some time in the last 8 years. 

But then Hyle found out about the proposals.. 

He’d been at her apartment for dinner and had found one of the millions of times that Jaime had proposed by writing it on a random piece of scratch paper on her desk. 

That particular time had been after he’d had a particularly trying work-day and she’d bought him Pentoshi take out even though it wasn’t her favorite. 

They’d been lying on the couch watching a dumb movie and he’d hopped up suddenly and run over to her desk to grab the first piece of paper he could find. Then he’d dropped it in her lap and settled back down to watch the rest of the movie. 

It was dumb, a random moment among millions of other random moments that all surrounded the ridiculousness that was her best friend’s insistence on proposing at every chance he could. 

But Hyle had been upset. 

Well, upset was putting it mildly. 

He’d stormed over to where she was just starting to brown the meat for the tacos they were having and thrust the random piece of scratch paper under her nose as if presenting the final piece of damning evidence in a courtroom. 

“Did you know about this?” his voice was not calm. 

“Of course I knew about it, it’s a joke. Jaime does it all the…” Brienne trailed off, realizing too late that this was probably one of those times where lies of omission were permissible. 

But the damage was done. 

“He does this all the time?” Hyle’s face was turning red. It wasn’t pretty. 

“Yes, but he doesn’t mean anything by it! He’s done it since we were in college!” 

“Right, well that’s going to stop right now. I will not have another man proposing to my girlfriend.” 

“I’m sorry?” she said this incredulously but Hyle, in his fashion, misinterpreted it. 

“You should be! This isn’t right! I’ve been trying to lessen his hold on you for months now, but if this is how it is then maybe you should stop hanging out with him altogether.” 

“No, sorry, no. I’m not going to stop hanging out with my best friend because for some reason you’re jealous of him. Jaime doesn’t see me like that.” The meat was going to burn if she didn’t stop stirring it, but this seemed like it was probably an important conversation that deserved her full attention. She turned the burner off. 

“Well it’s him or me, Brienne. I won’t date someone who gets a regular marriage proposal from her best friend.”

It was then that Jaime proved to either have the best or the worst timing imaginable. A key turned in the lock and Jaime entered already talking. 

“Hey Bluebell, I forgot to bring back your copy of ‘The Life and Times of Knights in the Age of Heroes’, oh hey Hyle.” He was holding the book in his left hand and two bags of Mereeneese take out in the crook of his right elbow. 

Hyle turned to Brienne, “He even has a key. Choose.” his face was a lovely shade of puce at this point, and he was glaring at Jaime and Brienne alternately. 

“Him, of course I choose him. I’m sorry, Hyle.” 

Hyle had immediately stormed out leaving Jaime looking bewildered and Brienne feeling, well, rather relieved actually. 

Jaime had wanted to know the details but after that all she really wanted to do was watch a documentary and eat food that wasn’t from the three places Hyle deemed ‘acceptable’. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
“Yes, Jaime. Alright, I’ll marry you.” 

It’s been two weeks since Hyle walked out and Brienne is done with saying no or rolling her eyes. She wants to see what will happen if she says yes. 

Jaime looks at her for a second, blinks twice, and then shoots to his feet and cups her cheek. 

“You’re not just saying that. You never say yes.” 

“Jaime my boyfriend gave me an ultimatum and I chose you, no I’m not just saying that, but are you actually asking? Were you serious all this time?” He rubs her nose with his and then nods. 

“Of course I was serious. I wouldn’t just ask. You laughed it off, and I understood, we were young, and for all that I had my dad’s money I hadn’t exactly bought a ring. But you kept saying no. So I figured I’d keep asking. And maybe one day you’d say yes. Because Bluebell I’ve been in love with you since chemistry.” 

It’s like all of Brienne’s hopes and dreams are coming true all at once and she doesn’t know how to feel. 

Jaime shuffles his feet, “any time you want to say something would be alright with me, Bluebell.” 

“I love you too, of course I love you too. I’ve been in love with you for years. I don’t remember not being in love with you. But I thought you were joking.” she gives in to the temptation to run her fingers through his hair and he leans into her hand.

“I know you did, but you were always going on about how you didn’t need a relationship. But then, then Hyle happened and I was so angry with myself for not asking you out first.” 

“I didn’t think you’d ever actually want me.” 

“Of course I want you, you’re my Bluebell. How could I want anyone but you?” 

“Okay, enough. Sap.” Jaime laughed at that before brushing his nose against hers again. 

“I need to kiss you now. I’ve been waiting for this for 8 years.” It somehow manages to be the best kiss Brienne has ever been a part of. Sweet, and intense, and laced with more meaning than any of the kisses that she had ever shared with Hyle. 

“I love you, I love you, I love you. Did you actually mean it when you said yes?” 

“Jaime we’ve never even dated. We can’t rush into getting married. This is too important.” 

“A long engagement, then. Just, wait here for a second.” He rushes out of the apartment and returns not even 5 minutes later with a small black box, and for a second Brienne can’t breathe. 

“Okay, okay, I’m going to ask you for real this time.” 

*fade to black*


End file.
